“I hear some people in the room having a litter of bulldogs. What’s going on?” Jeff Tucker asks a group of athletes at a CrossFit Gymnastics Certification. It turns out the sound is the exertion of gymnastics practice, and it’s a familiar one at Tucker’s certifications, where his athletes put their bodies to the test.

In this video, Tucker provides an overview of the planche progressions he’ll introduce in this series. Starting with a push-up, Tucker shows how to increase the difficulty to work toward a planche position. First, try a push-up, then turn your hands out to allow for more flexibility. Continue trying push-ups while walking your hands back down your body to increase the challenge. To kick it up another notch, try elevating your legs.

Tucker emphasizes a solid foundation for these progressions and the prerequisites of body awareness and midline stabilization.

“To get something like a planche, you have a lot of work to do,” Tucker says.

I've been trying a few tuck planches, and for me I'm having a lot more trouble by turning my hands backwards. Where I am limited by my wrist flexibility with my hands turned forwards, I can at least counterbalance myself with my fingers. With my hands turned backwards the weight is all in the heels of my hands, and I just fall forwards. Am I doing something wrong?

eric, part of this may have wound up on the edit room floor, but you need not turn your hands completely backwards while doing a tuc planche or full planche. some folks have very limited flexibility of the wrist and a slight to moderate turn will help in the this counterbalance strength move, especially as your hands begin to be placed more under the waist line area of your body as you lower to planche say from a handstand. notice when you do one of these on the ground say verses parallettes, your hands will be turned and wrists with it merely by grabbing a set of p bars.

Erik, turning your hands backwards in training the planche is similar to how it is performed on rings since a rings planche requires the rings to be turned out.

Learning how to balance in the planche with the hands turned out is a more of a time-in thing. Just practice it more and it should come. Some gymnasts prefer to do it this way, while others prefer to do it with fingers diagonal forward or out to the sides. However, this means the wrists are under a heavier degree of flexion.

Jeff, the planche pushup is currently my primary goal. What type of frequency and volume can be dedicated to achieving it? Do you recommend training days focused on static holds and other days on pseudo pushups or handstand pushups?

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